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Storm Pegs
- Author
- Jen Hadfield
- Narrator
- Jen Hadfield
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Publish Date
- 11 July 2024
- Run Time
- 10 hours 38 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Memoirs, Travel writing, Conservation of the environment, Coasts and Coastlines, Wildlife: birds and birdwatching: general interest, Sea life and the seashore: general interest
- Rating
- 5.0 (1 review)
What to expect
This audio edition is read by the author and was recorded in a remote studio in Shetland.
'Storm Pegs perfectly captures the knotting of language and landscape. I was transported.' - Katherine May, Sunday Times bestselling author of Wintering
From the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Highland Book Prize
What if the answer to ‘Where am I?’ is ‘heaven’?
In her late twenties, celebrated poet Jen Hadfield moved to the Shetland archipelago to make her life anew. A scattering of islands at the northernmost point of the United Kingdom, frequently cut off from the mainland by storms, Shetland is a place of Vikings and myths, of ancient languages and old customs, of breathtaking landscapes and violent weather. It has long fascinated travellers seeking the edge of the world.
On these islands known for their isolation and drama, Hadfield found something more: a place teeming with life, where rare seabirds blow in on Atlantic gales, seals and dolphins visit its beaches, and wild folk festivals carry the residents through long, dark winters. She found a close-knit community, too, of neighbours always willing to lend a boat or build a creel, of women wild-swimming together in the star-spangled winter seas. Over seventeen years, as bright summer nights gave way to storm-lashed winters, she learned new ways to live.
In prose as rich and magical as Shetland itself, Hadfield transports us to the islands as a local; introducing us to the remote and beautiful archipelago where she has made her home, and shows us new ways of living at the edge.
Critics Review
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Storm Pegs perfectly captures the knotting of language and landscape. I was transported.
Katherine May, Sunday Times bestselling author of Wintering
-
Storm Pegs is rich, attentive and beautifully written. Hadfield writes vividly about the tides, the Shaetlan language, and shows a great appreciation for the people and modern life of Shetland. This book has been my friend. I really loved it and I recommend it
Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun
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Delightful: at once intricate and effortless, playful and deeply-felt. A heartfelt paean to a coldwater Eden.
Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment
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What a wonderful book. Jen Hadfield just has to turn her languaged gaze to the world and it fizzes to life on the page. One of the most intensely realised accounts of a place - and time in a place - I have read.
Philip Marsden, author of The Summer Isles
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Storm Pegs is a deeply thoughtful and beautifully written account of a life centred on making art in a lively island community. Hadfield writes with rare nuance about choosing and building a new life in a place that calls to many of us.
Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater
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A gorgeous portrait of a fascinating, ever-changing place, as well as very many other things: friendship, community, creation and self-creation, the cycle of the seasons and the toil and triumph of the elements. I adored it.
Sara Baume, author of A Line Made By Walking
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A book as exhilarating as a dip in wild winter waters.
Guardian
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This book is brim-full of love for Shetland – for its land and seascapes, for its people and language. Hadfield’s writing is fuelled by unceasing curiosity and attentiveness. It is vivid, lively and fresh
Malachy Tallack, author of Sixty Degrees North
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In this memoir, written after 17 years living in this wild, wonderful place, Hadfield reflects on her pristine but often brutal surroundings, where seals and dolphins nose up to the beaches and residents enjoy wild swimming through wintry seas.
GQ, The best books of 2024
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Storm Pegs is as much an account of the author finding new personal bearings as a series of magic lantern slides about insular life . . . This is a great, bright birl of a book – thoroughly beguiling.
The Spectator
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Hadfield paints Shetland vividly as a place ever-changing. Storm Pegs is a powerful hymn to Shetland and to community, as well as to the awesomeness of nature. This is a bewitching book, tactile and immersive, riven with salt winds, alive with human oddities and loud with the cries of seabirds. Everything glows in the light of Hadfield’s words, from slimy sea molluscs to grand island vistas.
The Telegraph
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A sensual love letter to the beautiful island of Shetland
The Herald
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A book to be read slowly, while savouring the details
The Scotsman
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 1.0
-
5.0 1.0
Oh dear.
This is such a well-written book. It really is. The book paints such a picture of just how beautiful and commanding an environment Shetland is.
I will press on with the audiobook, purely for the quality of the writing.
What lets it down, sadly, is the author choosing to narrate it herself.
She has a lovely accent, but it is decidedly monotone, the ‘s’ is very hissy and then it is hard to hear the rest of the words.
The author’s forte is her writing.
I would absolutely recommend reading this book. Not so much, the audio.
I do hope this wonderful writer might nominate a professional to read - it is too good a book to be let down in this way.misdirect 2025-12-12
Details
- Author
- Jen Hadfield
- Narrator
- Jen Hadfield
- Duration
- 10 hours 38 minutes
- Release Date
- 11 July 2024
- ISBN
- 9781529038040
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Genre
- Memoirs, Travel writing, Conservation of the environment, Coasts and Coastlines, Wildlife: birds and birdwatching: general interest, Sea life and the seashore: general interest
- Rating
- 5.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 1.0(1 review)
Synopsis
This audio edition is read by the author and was recorded in a remote studio in Shetland. 'Storm Pegs perfectly captures the knotting of language and landscape. I was transported.' - Katherine May, Sunday Times bestselling author of WinteringFrom the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Highland Book PrizeWhat if the answer to ‘Where am I?’ is ‘heaven’?In her late twenties, celebrated poet Jen Hadfield moved to the Shetland archipelago to make her life anew. A scattering of islands at the northernmost point of the United Kingdom, frequently cut off from the mainland by storms, Shetland is a place of Vikings and myths, of ancient languages and old customs, of breathtaking landscapes and violent weather. It has long fascinated travellers seeking the edge of the world.On these islands known for their isolation and drama, Hadfield found something more: a place teeming with life, where rare seabirds blow in on Atlantic gales, seals and dolphins visit its beaches, and wild folk festivals carry the residents through long, dark winters. She found a close-knit community, too, of neighbours always willing to lend a boat or build a creel, of women wild-swimming together in the star-spangled winter seas. Over seventeen years, as bright summer nights gave way to storm-lashed winters, she learned new ways to live.In prose as rich and magical as Shetland itself, Hadfield transports us to the islands as a local; introducing us to the remote and beautiful archipelago where she has made her home, and shows us new ways of living at the edge.
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